I started 16 years ago with solar PV on the roof of my home. By the time I needed some technical assistance the company I used was bought out by Real Goods Solar and in my particular area they concentrated on larger scale solar PV, so residential was not their priority. An inverter failed and I called the company, gave them the serial number of the inverter, fail codes and in two days had a refurbished inverter sent to me UPS. I isolated the system, tagged the wiring and removed, pulled the old inverter off the wall and put the new inverter in it’s place. About 30 minutes later, I powered up the inverter and it started making power. Box up the old inverter and sent it back. The bottom line these companies track their product by model and serial number. If and when there’s a problem, you call the manufacturer and deal with them. If you need the labor done, you can always find a solar PV installation company in your area.

” “That was never part of our equation, but the way that we’re looking at it is we’re trying to uphold the reputation of the industry has left. It’s pretty sad the amount of people that call and the amount of money they’re spending for us to fix it,” he said. “In some cases, They would have been better off staying with the utility company. If consumers spent the same amount of research in finding the right company initially as they are in finding someone to fix it, they could be avoiding this situation altogether””

Most of the installations I’ve viewed have D.C. combiner box(s) and one can cut down on troubleshooting, by finding a string or strings that are sub-standard with the output. Having to take an entire array up is bad installation practices from the beginning. It seems troubleshooting equipment has come down in price also. It is possible to get an IR camera or detector that one can point and sample each and every panel in an array for hot spots and bad connections.